My Habits are Who I AM…
Most of the things I do daily are habitual. This means that a big part of my life is almost entirely on autopilot. My habits, cannot be tossed out of a window; they must be coaxed down the stairs a step at a time. And once I understand that my habits can change, I have the freedom and the responsibility to remake them. It is the intersection of knowledge (what to do), skill (how to do it), and desire (want to do).
My habits are who I am because what I do daily matters more than what I occasionally do. They are the invisible architecture of my life. My brain is a remarkable instrument that is open to suggestions. Feeding it a few positive thoughts each morning will produce neurotransmitters to assure my happiness. It knows I am fooling it but goes along for the ride anyway.
I decide whether to be happy or not. No one else, no outside influence controls my level of happiness. It is all in the way I choose to view life. And what I choose affects my performance in all areas of my life. That is why it is so essential to decide to be happy, to commit to happiness daily.
I brush my teeth, meditate, and exercise when I wake up. I get in the car to go to work and, without thinking, I put on my seatbelt. There’s no decision-making at work. It’s automatic. If I have habits that work for me, I am much more likely to be happier, healthier, and more productive.
Regardless of my version of true happiness, living a happier, more satisfying life is within my reach. Habits matter. If you’ve ever tried breaking a bad habit, you know all too well how engrained they are. Well, good habits are deeply engrained, too. Everyone’s version of happiness is a little different, and so is their path to achieving it.
The best way I automate a new habit is to set the bar incredibly low. I pick something so small, it’s easy to do. Motivation isn’t required to do it. I do a minimum of two push-ups a day. Some days I do a hundred, but I never raise the minimum. My goal remains two push-ups, and anything more is a bonus. If I want to maintain my habit of doing daily push-ups, I will always be okay with just doing the tiny version of it…Two.
My habits are who I am because they are a redundant set of automatic unconscious thoughts, behaviours and emotions acquired through repetition. It is when I have done something so many times, my body now knows how to do it better than my mind.
I wake up in the morning, and I begin to think about my problems. Those problems are circuits and memories in my brain, each one of those memories is connected to people and things at certain times and places. If my brain is a record of my past the moment I start my day, I am already thinking about my past.
Each one of my memories has an emotion. My emotions are the products of my past experiences. So, the moment I recall those memories of my problems, I suddenly feel unhappy, I feel sad, and I feel pain.
How I think and how feel creates my state of being. So, my entire state of being is in the past when I start my day. My familiar history will sooner or later become my predictable future.
So, if I believe that my thoughts have something to do with my destiny and I can’t think greater than how I feel, or my feelings have become my means of thinking, by my very definition of emotions, I am thinking in my past. And for the most part, I am going to keep creating the same scenario.
So, then if I grab my cell phone, check my WhatsApp, check my texts, check my emails, check Facebook. I take a picture of myself and post it on social media. I tweet something, I do Instagram, I check the news and now I feel connected to everything that’s known in my life.
And then I go through a series of routine behaviours. I get out of bed on the same side, go to the toilet, get a drink, take a shower, get dressed, drive to work the same way, do the same things, see the same people that push the same emotional buttons and that becomes my routine, and it becomes like a program.
Happiness is a habit that I choose to cultivate, and if I want to direct my life, I must take control of my consistent actions. It’s not what I do occasionally that shapes my life, but what I do consistently. Let today be the day I give up who I have been for whom I can become.